Maybe after a long haul that could be the case.
I put 50 tilapia in one of my ponds last year and those suckers were lightning fast! I caught 27 with the rod in September, and found 11 in Octomber and November. I’m not sure what happened to the remaining 12 but I wrote it off to predators and/or raccoons when they died.
What sizes caught? What sizes when stocked? What times of the year? In a fertile pond, 50 mixed sex tilapia will have a small percentage of their 1000's of offspring that will survive and could grow to 2 pounds+ in just 4-6 months. My educated guess if T were stocked in a small, 2-6" size, the majority were eaten and what you caught were mostly offspring. The tilapia in northern ponds are highly prolific, yet those reaching adult size remains limited. Also, in the 4 years of widespread pond stocking, I have yet to get a single report of a die-off that that was more than "a few" large fish being seen.
